I'm a tad confused on what the point of this is? Even if we could see any changes, what the hell are we supposed to do about them? It takes approx 7 mins for light to travel from the sun to earth (give or take) so even if the satellites did spot a solar emission heading towards us, there aint a damned thing we're going to be able to do about it. Just think money could of been far better spent on other more pressing matters, like checking if the far side of the moon really is made of cheese.

Vin
on February 7, 2011 5:26 PM

Why didnt' they just launch two satallites going in the same direction 1/2 an orbit apart?

Aaron
on February 7, 2011 7:57 PM

Lee - charged particles from the sun travel much more slowly than light, hence the radio signals from the satellites arrive sooner, giving time to do something about it.

Vin - how would you do this? I think the only way would be to start out as they have here, but then decelerate the satellites (relative to Earth) one they had reached the desired location. Perhaps it was not considered worthwhile to carry the extra fuel required to do this, bearing in mind that satellites don't last forever anyway.

Jim
on February 7, 2011 8:01 PM

I heard somewhere that these two probes are in the same orbit as the earth, on ahead and one behind. I don't think a single launch could do that.

Lee: The point is not to serve as an early-warning system but to allow scientists to study the Sun and its activity as a whole 3-D entity. Merely observing from Earth-based telescopes can never reveal more than a 2-D half facing us at any given time.